


Dust Biters

by 3kmicrowav



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Humor, M/M, Post-Canon, or rather accidential human?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 03:11:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17256506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3kmicrowav/pseuds/3kmicrowav
Summary: It turned out that homosexuals did go to hell; to be precise, to a level in hell that's mostly covered with gay bars forever looping in 9 to 10 a.m.—which would feel jolly good and totally indifferent to any socially non-practicing bookdealer who had been running business in Soho for a lifetime, before he's dead.





	Dust Biters

At the first realization of his death, Aziraphale didn't find it alarming or worth second consideration. Merely embarrassed. Mostly inconvenient. 

He glanced at his corpse, now stuck in that claustrophobic space between the floor of his bookshop and a pile of vintage, metal-cornered books, sighed, tried to grab the cocoa on the edge of windowsill before it spilled on the fine carpet in the book-induced aftershock, failed in the absence of a fleshy hand, watched as the fatal fall and spill of the mug and its rolling away and knocking over on the portable heater, and sighed again.

"Well, this is going to be a disaster."

The weeny electric spark would smell like toasted cocoa beans if only he could appreciate it with a human nose. Unfortunately the overlapping senses between humans and angels were restricted to sound and vision, so at least he could watch it as the spark turned into a disturbingly shining ball of light, and rained down on his house of precious, precious books.

It happened too fast. That was going to be the line of his self-defense. Too fast to miracle up an invisible shield between him and the almost rotten wooden shelf, or to miracle down the flame burning through his paper stacks and now windows. That was what he was telling to the first stranger in sight, after recollecting himself from the trauma* and blinking away the could-be-there tears.

For someone who had been kicking around the neighborhood of London for over one thousand years, Aziraphale didn't really feel too bad when his targeted listener didn't listen to him at all. Instead, that stranger was neither really a stranger. He recognized him by the hoodie and the windbreaker, somehow took the place of his more worldly known hood and cloak, still coloured as old-fashioned as the first midnight since the beginning of life. Someone could mistake him for a cyber-professional sneaking around this block for his familiar dealer.

Aziraphale was polite as always. He waved, as Death himself was not a hugging or at least a hand-shaking person.

"You changed your look! I kind of like it. _Trendy._ " He managed. He knew it's the fashion of this decade because not even Crowley could begin to take in and catch up with it.

Death turned his cervical spine around and stared at him, dispassionately.

Alright, so someone's dead. Aziraphale looked around and into the burning building, then to the next shops along the street: the Italian cafe was closed, the erotic toy shop was open but its owner was unharmed and already out crying for help, whose shrieks had attracted the entire attention of the night pub across the street, and some befittingly built chaps were running out from under the neon signboard and trying out on the fire hydrant.

Oh no. None of his neighbours should be dead due to his clumsiness. It shouldn't count. Counted as his inference, maybe...? Aziraphale turned around to Death again. Drafting his argument quickly in mind, Aziraphale only found his old acquaintance had his claws in pocket, not even so interested in the sweating temporary firemen as the next immortal being was, remorselessly staring at the nest of cockroaches fleeing out of the bookshop's front door.

Does heaven hand out free souls to cockroaches for Death to collect nowadays? A flash of relief went across Aziraphale's mind, very briefly, before Death dropped his jaw and produced an A6-sized moleskin out of his pocket. 

"...AZIRAPHALE, I PRESUME? GOOD, GOOD..." He moved his bony finger across the page, "RIGHT HERE. PERFECT." He crossed out the event bullet before Aziraphale's name with a swipe of fingertips. "NOTHING ELSE TO ATTEND TO? NO ONE ELSE TO PAY A VISIT TO? GREAT. WE SHALL HIT THE ROAD ANYTIME YOU ARE READY."

"I'm sorry, but I didn't quite get that. Please, one moment." Aziraphale wiggled out of Death's reaching. "There must be a mistake. I'm discorporated, not dead. Huge difference." He pointed at himself, wondering if Death had some problems with his memories, from old age or whatnot. They'd only met twenty-ish years ago, and he had some second thoughts on the fresh look and suspiciously improved custom service. "I'm the Celestial agent stationing in The Great Britain. Not including the commonwealth countries since the recent years."

"AH, OF COURSE, NEVER FORGOT ABOUT THAT." Death snapped his finger bones, not quite so successfully. He cleared his throat half-awkwardly and pretended that never happened, then retrieved a tiny post-it from a thousand pages before. "DUH-DUH-DUH-DAH-DOO, LET'S TAKE A LOOK." He gave the post-it a gentle shake before it grew into its full size, which looked like an entire page of official documentation. "YEP, AZIRAPHALE, FORMER GUARDIAN ANGEL OF THE EASTERN GATE OF EDEN, PRINCIPALITY OF—SORRY ABOUT THE COLONIES—BUT THINK ABOUT IT, ALL HARD WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY?—FUNNY HUMAN EXPRESSION, DIDN'T GET WHO'S JACK THOUGH—ANYWAY, HERE'S YOUR RESIGNATION." He shook another post-it attached to this full-sized page to its full size. "AND THIS IS THE OFFICIAL APPROVAL! QUITE EFFICIENT, LOOKING AT THE TIME WINDOW, GIVEN THAT IT WAS ISSUED BY HEAVEN. NO OFFENCE."

"None taken." Aziraphale mumbled numbly, petrified. Death didn't reject his request to read over the documents. He even offered to take a sit at the closed Italian cafe so his customer could take all the time needed under sufficient lighting, for the fire from the bookshop was generally put out, and some people were screaming at the Aziraphale-shaped grills.

Aziraphale could no longer hear the screams and fire sirens as soon as he stepped into the cafe, sat before the lantern Death switched on for him and began to read. He could always calm himself down by reading. 

Right. The document. He had never seen anything like this, let alone wrote and signed one. Could be fake. Right. His handwriting though, huh, funny, and the seal. Looked authentic, which was weird. He read it again and found no evidence of counterfeit, then moved to the approval letter. Only one glance and he was very sure of the authentication by the unnecessary way Metatron signed, no, painted his entire title.

He lifted his nose from the pages and looked into Death's expecting eye sockets. "The documents are not real." He said, hurriedly added as those eye sockets frowned in disapproval, "I didn't say it's fake! Surely someone with proper tools and techniques could make this all pretty legal. But I've never,  _never_ written anything, _anything_ to resign from my post here. I've never been more satisfied to be stationing here among the humans, in London!"

"WELL, THAT EXPLAINS A LOT." Death said dryly, but still holding his patience. "MAYBE YOU LOVE TO BE HERE WITH THEM, ENOUGH TO BE ONE OF THEM."

"Nonono, it's..." Aziraphale tried to explain, "Different in so many ways. How could I protect them and encourage them to do good without being an angel? I couldn't even protect myself. Look, I could be dead." He vaguely gestured at his transparent, illuminating... ghost. Now that the knowledge of his dead condition had sunk in, he grew more and more nervous that he could literally went over to the counter and made himself a coffee, with scotch in it**.

Death shrugged. Aziraphale could picture him had gone through this kind of bollocks for too many times, persuading people that they're really dead, no matter how fit or young they were. He probably assumed Aziraphale as another stubborn one who just didn't believe it had really happened. 

Aziraphale didn't believe it, that's for sure. He turned to the pages again, staring at Metatron's signature and weighing at the possibility that someone had had enough of him that would like to risk breaking heaven's laws to get rid of him. Surely that time he messed up with the Apocalypse was a rub in Metatron's face, but they didn't need to do this... They could, eh, demote him, fire him, arrest him, punish him, but this...? What's the point if you punish someone but not make an example out of it?

"How did you get this?" He asked.

Death answered automatically. "THOUGH MAILBOX, LIKE ALWAYS."

"Could anyone else plant the mail in it?"

"YOU'VE BEEN WORKING FOR HEAVEN FOR THESE MILLENNIA. DO YOU THINK IT'S ANYWHERE NEAR POSSIBLE, SEEING HOW IT WORKS ON DAILY BASIS?"

Death's words made Aziraphale metaphorically sweated a little. He hadn't received any working mails for some time. Actually, a very long time, since…

"It couldn't be!" He was surprised at his own volume. "I mean, it's not even physically possible, or would I rather say, spiritually possible? Look at me now, a soul, but as an angel I couldn't possibly begin to have one. Spirit, yes; soul? no! These two things are fundamentally different in nature. No one in the Creation could transform from one to the other."

"THEORETICALLY," Death yawned, "I AGREE WITH YOU. BUT YOU CAN NEVER TELL. LITTLE MERMAID, YOU KNOW."

"Huh? Oh, that," Aziraphale whimpered, "isn't that something made up by humans in their literature?”

Now he could see the effort Death was making to keep his cheekbones stretched in an angle that could barely be taken as a professional smile. "OH, CAN WE SKIP THIS TOPIC...? I DON'T REALLY LIKE THOSE MADE-UP STORIES WHERE CHAMUEL PREVAILS..."

Love conquers death? Aziraphale thought about it, frustrated. He was never short of love in his life, he loved most things and beings on earth, even his cockroaches who were constantly chewing on his carpet and scones but made a beautiful view when flying across the room with their shiny armors when he was trying to clean the reading sofa once a year... He encouraged love to happen, and talked people into giving love a second chance in front of the court, which had been spoken of highly by Crowley because of all these "two more years of suffering from a doomed marriage". 

Now thinking of Crowley, it could be much easier for him to fetch Aziraphale than Orpheus going all the way through hell for Eurydice, as he was already in the bottom of it, neglecting the fact that he could have been keeping any chance to go down there away from him, except for the mandatory biennial reports. He had always been a devoting friend whether he liked to admit it or not, and could do things he himself would not begin to believe for his friend. But heaven (where Aziraphale was definitely going) was not the playground for devils like him. 

Aziraphale supposed that he's all on his own when he got back to heaven and kicked Metatron's office wide open. He could scold him about this miserable mistake, since, huh, as a human soul that went into heaven, he technically held the power to judge any angels in the _end_?

He was already dreaming about new body reassignment after Metatron admitting themselves being mean and power-abusing when Death clicked on the table, finally lost his patience that came from unexplainable but certainly-had-happened employee training. "WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND? CAN WE GO NOW? PLEASE?"

"Sure," Aziraphale slowly rose from the chair. "I can't wait to query Metatron about this after I went back to heaven."

"HEAVEN?" Death was a little bit confused before he checked his moleskin again. Then he grinned, sincerely and at a skeleton's best try. "UH-OH, YOU'RE NOT GOING THERE."

* * *

* Considering the frequency Aziraphale had his book hoarding places burnt down was beyond recommendation, he did have sped up the trauma recoveries over the years: two centuries after Alexandria; two decades after Constantinople; two years after the great London fire; two days after the Armageddon't and some fine wines in Ritz; only two blinks of eyes this time. What an achievement.

** Which he had secretly made a lot during his time in Edinburgh. The shameful part was the coffee, not the scotch.

 


End file.
